The Biggest Key to Business Failure

The Biggest Key to Business Failure

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail ...

Benjamin Franklin is widely credited with this quote even though there is no substantive evidence that he actually said it.

Either way, there are actual, accredited statistics that say less than 20% of business owners have a plan for their business.

If that was not enough, only one in three business owners who have a plan regularly leverage and update it.

What is the point of creating a plan just to shove it in a drawer?

The bottom line is while dumb luck and sheer willpower might get you somewhere without a plan, you will better utilize your limited resources with a roadmap laid out before you.

  1. A dream written down with a date becomes a goal.
  2. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan.
  3. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.

The internet is great for finding quotes like this with no visible attribute, but we all went into business with dreams.

Have you ever taken a balloon, blown it up, and then let it go?

The odds are that it did not travel a straight path.

It probably exerted lots of energy, flew in a crazy path, then dropped to the ground.

This is what I see so many entrepreneurs doing.

They have great dreams and potential.

But when "released," they exert all kinds of energy and resources going in lots of directions, before ...

And those dreams are never realized.

Have you broken your dreams down into actionable plans?

A roadmap for your business should start big and then get small, showing exactly what should be done and when.

It should start with ...

  • Your mission and purpose
  • Your big (really big) goals and dreams

It should define a strategy to reach those goals ...

  • By laying out defined milestones

It should define an execution plan to accomplish those milestones ...

  • With annual and quarterly objectives
  • With specific measurables to determine progress

Do you have a plan to reach your dreams? Is it actionable and something you leverage regularly?

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